A collaborative workspace (henceforth “workspace”) refers to functionality that allows individuals to work on a shared task in a coordinated fashion. A typical workspace defines permissions which identify a collection of members who are permitted to interact with the workspace. The permissions also define the manner in which the respective members are permitted to interact with the workspace. The workspace also commonly defines a collection of items (e.g., document items, etc.) associated with the workspace. In operation, authorized members may engage the workspace (in a manner defined by the permissions) to work on the shared items in a coordinated fashion.
In one approach, a user may add items to a workspace in a generally manual and ad hoc manner. For example, the user may interact with a separate general purpose tool for accessing items stored in a particular repository. The user may then add the accessed items to the workspace. The user performs this task by suspending her work in the workspace and activating the separate tool. If the user is interested in accessing items stored in different repositories, she may find it appropriate to use multiple different access tools. This approach has potential shortcomings. For instance, the user may find it a burdensome, disruptive, and error-prone task to access and interact with the separate item access tool or tools in an ad hoc manner.